EFFECTS OF HEALTH EDUCATION INTERVENTION ON USE OF FOODS LABELS AMONG STUDENTS OF FEDERAL UNIVERSITY DUTSE.

Abstract

Packed food labels display sensitive Health related information like nutrient content, expired date, storage guidelines, mixing
guidelines, Health claims and sensitive ingredient in food, drink and other products which are intended to guide consumers
on healthy food choices..This study was conducted to assess the effect of six weeks consumer Health Education intervention
on use/practice of packaged food label information among the students of Federal University Dutse, Jigawa State. To achieve
this purpose, a pretest-posttest experimental research design was used. A total 180 sampled students (90 each for intervention
and control) were selected and placed into control and intervention through multi stage sampling procedures of stratified
random sampling, systematic, proportionate and simple random sampling techniques. A manual tagged label literacy manual,
eight posters and packaged foods labels were used as training aids while a validated questionnaire PFL –PQ was used to test
the participants pre and post intervention level of practice of labels. Inferential Statistics of paired sample t-test and effect of
size were used to test the effectiveness of the intervention Programme at 0.05 level of significance. The result revealed there
is significant improvement on practice of packaged food label from the baseline score in the intervention group t(89) =
40.05, p < .00001).Meanwhile the post intervention scores of the variable used /practice of packaged food label among the
students showed significant improvement on the intervention group compared to the control group(Value of t(89) =35.64 , p
<.00001 and effect of size of 2.69).Based on this results ,it was concluded that the six week consumer Health Education
intervention Programme is effective in improving students practice /use of packaged food label information. It was therefore
recommended among others that; this research can be applied to a national level to require label education within all high
school and college curricula to increase food label education and nutrition awareness among these age groups.